Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit was ordered by a Pennsylvania jury to pay more than $2.2 billion to a former Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the weedkiller. The verdict is the largest so far in five years of litigation over the herbicide, according to Bloomberg.
Jurors in state court in Philadelphia on Jan. 26 awarded John McKivison $250 million to compensate for his losses and $2 billion in punitive damages over his claims that years of using Roundup at work and at home caused his cancer. The 49-year-old was exposed to Roundup when he worked as a landscaper, according to evidence in the case.
Bayer shares fell as much as 5.7%, the most since Nov. 20, after the verdict. Shares had already fallen almost 3% just before the jury announced its verdict after Bank of America analysts downgraded the company to underperform from neutral because of an overhang created by the Roundup litigation.
Analysts said the decision emphasizes the risks the firm continues to face from legal action, though they say the high verdicts are likely to be reduced.
Justin Teresi, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, said the verdict suggests “settlement pressure will likely keep building through 1H. The award may likely be reduced as excessive at some point, yet this challenge could prove more difficult because the ratio of compensatory to punitive damages is within constitutional limits.”
Monsanto has won 10 of 16 Roundup trials recently, but the cases it has lost include a $1.5 billion verdict in Missouri handed down in November to three ex-users of the herbicide. The Bayer unit faces its next US trial early this month in state court in Delaware.
The German conglomerate remains under intense pressure from the massive liability it inherited with its $63 billion acquisition of St. Louis-based Monsanto in 2018. Bloomberg News reported on Jan. 18 that company leaders were leaning against breakup options, including separating its consumer-health and crops-science divisions, in spite of investor frustration over Monsanto.
“We disagree with the jury’s adverse verdict that conflicts with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and worldwide regulatory and scientific assessments, and believe that we have strong arguments on appeal to get this verdict overturned and the unconstitutionally excessive damage award eliminated or reduced,” Bayer said in an emailed statement.
In 2019, a California jury awarded a combined $2.055 billion in damages to a husband and wife who claimed they got cancer from using the weedkiller for 30 years. That award later was cut to $87 million and allowed to stand by the US Supreme Court.
Bayer has set aside as much as $16 billion to resolve more than 100,000 cases over Roundup, which it acquired in the Monsanto deal. The company now faces a second wave of suits alleging glyphosate and other elements of the herbicide are carcinogens. It lost a bid in 2022 to have the US Supreme Court hear arguments that all Roundup suits should be barred from going forward on procedural grounds.
Lawyers for McKivison, a resident of Williamsport, Pa., said the former landscaper loaded 25-gallon tanks of Roundup on his tractor to deal with weeds and other vegetation on the job and also used it on his lawn and garden at home. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer linked to Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate, in 2020, according to court testimony.
“The jury spoke very elegantly with their verdict about the lengthy list of misconduct Monsanto engaged in as they recklessly sold this product for more than 50 years and callously endangered the safety of users,” said Thomas Kline, a Philadelphia-based lawyer who represented the plaintiff in the three-week trial.
Roundup users argue in the lawsuits that Monsanto knew some researchers tagged glyphosate as a carcinogen, but the company sought to bury those studies. Internal Monsanto documents made public during the litigation also showed company officials ghost-wrote scientific studies backing glyphosate’s safety.
Bayer CEO Bill Anderson has been reviewing the company’s strategy and structure since taking over at the helm in June. The Texas native has said nothing is off the table as he seeks to win back the faith of investors and navigate the company out of a thicket of challenges.
In the meantime, closing arguments in a Bayer Roundup class action case in Australia were made on Jan. 30, according to Reuters. It is reported the be first such case to advance so far in Australia.